About this piece…

“This is Long John once again with The Party Line…”

The basic drum track and the first synthesizer tracks were laid down in just a couple of hours, and then proceeded to get reshaped until I found a mix I liked a couple of days later on Thursday afternoon, January 28th… then I started to add the voices of Long John Nebel and George Van Tassel to the mix.

The recording is interesting in pieces, but the audio quality is horrible, so I decided to just make it even more obscure sounding for my collage… I had space transmissions in mind.

Some Quotes Used In This Piece

The following are (mostly) from George Van Tassel

These beings are not like us… however, they have many advantages over us… they don’t have to walk around like we do…

They move by an act called levitation… uhh, and they don’t have to turn when they go… they’re shaped like, umm, uhh, an electric light bulb…

Van Tassel: They don’t have to turn to look, they can see in all directions at once – Interrupted by Long John: Are you talking about about beings from another planet? Van Tassel continuing: I’m talking about intelligent beings…

Van Tassel: I’m talking about intelligent beings… other forms of life Interrupted by Long John: From other planets? Van Tassel continuing: I don’t know… I don’t know if I can classify us with them or not…

A thought is what it is, it can’t be anything else (statement followed by indistinguishable word sounds…)

Long John: Was this at Giant Rock Airport? Van Tassel: Yes, this was at Giant Rock. Long John: Underneath the rock? Van Tassel: Yes, under the rock…

The rest of the quotes I’ll leave as a mystery for you to discover…

About the Integratron and George Van Tassel

Before last March (click hereto go to the March 2009 post with photos of our trip to Pioneer Town, The Integratron, Giant Rock and Joshua Tree) I had never heard of a very unusual building that exists in Landers, out the Mojave desert near Joshua Tree called The Integratron…

Nor had I heard of it’s creator, a man named George Van Tassel or the huge rock in the desert nearby called Giant Rock where George Van Tassel claimed he had contacted the aliens that had given him the plans to build The Integratron – a body rejuvenation machine.

In August 1953, Van Tassel claimed that he had been contacted both telepathically and later in person by Venusians, who gave him a technique to rejuvenate human cell tissues. Van Tassel, acting on these instructions, began constructing the Integratron in 1954.

Construction costs were paid for by an annual series of successful UFO conventions, the Giant Rock Spacecraft Conventions, which continued for nearly 25 years. Van Tassel was clearly inspired by earlier 1950s contacteeGeorge Adamski.

Construction of the Integratron was supposedly complete in 1959, but Van Tassel continued to make minor modifications until his sudden death in 1978.

The Integratron is a dome-shaped structure constructed out of plywood and fiberglass by George Van Tassel. He built the structure in Landers, California, USA as a “rejuvenation machine” supposedly following instructions provided by visitors from the planet Venus.

The workings of the Integratron, according to Van Tassel, supposedly rely chiefly on two principles.

The first principle involves the occult sacred geometry of domes, and their ability to concentrate mystical “energies” within the earth. The Integratron is also said to be constructed atop a powerful “energy vortex”. According to adherents of this belief, the dome-shape naturally concentrates the energies of the vortex for the benefit of users. Also, the building is said to borrow design cues from the Tabernacle of Moses and the King’s Chamber of the Great Pyramid of Giza, both of which were thought by some occultists to have similar “energy focusing” properties.

The second part of the theory centers around the belief that human beings are truly electrical in nature. It is believed that, though each individual has his unique personal “wavelength,” the multiple wavelengths of energy put out by “focusing and concentrating devices” such as the Integratron will find a “resonance” with the individual’s basic harmonic frequency and “re-charge” his cellular structure, as if he were a battery.

Van Tassel also built the nearby Integratron and a small airport in the vicinity, which he operated from 1947 to 1975.

A single large room, which was subsequently filled in, was dug beneath the rock and resided in by a prospector named Frank Critzer during the 1930s and early 1940s. Critzer, a friend of Van Tassel’s, perished in a self-detonated dynamite explosion in this room on July 24, 1942, while being investigated by local police.[2]

Shortly after the turn of the 21st century, Giant Rock fractured in two, revealing an interior of white granite. The entire exterior surface of the rock is now reportedly covered in graffiti.[3]

What Are Sound Collages?

As a little kid I was fascinated by my parent’s cassette recorder and would play with it all the time, making recordings and dreaming about making what I now call sound collages.

A sound col­lage is like a paper col­lage, but using audio sam­ples, syn­the­siz­ers, drum tracks and other audio mate­r­ial to cre­ate a new work — not a “song” nec­es­sar­ily — but some­thing like an audi­tory adven­ture, made out of the var­i­ous found materials and full of sound textures, chance happenings and odd bits of sound to trigger thoughts, memories or ideas… like soundtracks for stream-of-conscious movies that never existed.

When I was almost twenty I got a synthesizer and finally started making some of the things I dreamed about when I was a little kid, and twenty five years later I’m still trying to make those kind of recordings.

About Eccentric Activities

The members of Eccentric Activities included myself, a Roland Juno-60 Synthesizer, a Fostex X-15 four-track recorder, various sound effects records, and some odd tape machines and half-broken effects pedals.

Sometimes my friend Mark Powell (he sang for several of the bands I was in) would come by and add vocals… and once I spent an evening recording some Eccentric Activities material with a couple of Mark’s friends (tracks 5 and 6 of the playlist below.)

I had a friend at the time name Mark (a different Mark) who had been a Mod with me, but he had become more of a New Romantic (a fashion sub-culture of the time into bands like Visage, Adam Ant, early Duran Duran, Simple Minds) and he talked me into getting this synthesizer.

I sold my Juno-60 so Tania and I could have some money for moving to Minnesota in August of 1987 (We had a big moving sale and sold everything we had – but that’s a story for another time).

I used to miss my Juno a lot, but now I have a software version on my computer – so that helps. I’d sure would love to have an original though…

The Ol’ Fostex X-15

I had a girlfriend in the early 80’s named Angela and one of the last things she did for me was buy this four-track recorder so I could try and make better recordings of my keyboard ramblings, which, I was convinced at the time, would lead to musical fame and fortune…

I made a bunch of recordings with the machine but it had a fatal flaw, a low-hum around 120-130 Hz that was really annoying and just got worse when you made tape copies of tape copies, like we did back then.

Lucky for you, now, with the Magic of Digital Recording I can clean up the tracks somewhat (I’m not a professional) and so what you hear on these versions have had noise reduction with a better frequency equalization than the original copies. You can hear my clumsy keyboard playing much better now.

Back in 1988, while Tania and I lived in Minneapolis I traded the four-track recorder to a heavy metal band for something “herbal”, and that was the end of Eccentric Activities.

The X-15 had been the heart of the project, the Juno-60 was the voice, and I had been the hands.

About The Selection of Compositions

This is only seven out of over a dozen different compositions from the time. I’ve deliberately spared you from having to hear any tracks with my thin, young voice and bad singing.

Unfortunately that does mean you don’t get to hear my cover version of Joy Division’s She’s Lost Control unless I can figure out how to do a good “vocal-removal” from the original mix.

To Download MP3s – Right click (with your right mouse button), and choose “Save link to…” and then select where you want to download the MP3 file. Click enter and the download will begin.

1. Driving In The Rain – This is the first piece I recorded when I got my Fostex X-15 Four-Track. I used sound effects records to attempt to create a rhythm because I didn’t have a drum machine most of time…
[media id=41 width=500 height=375]

2. Industrial Symphony – Recorded right after Driving In The Rain. Another attempt at creating a “industrial” rhythm with various bits from sound effects records. I didn’t have any Sampling machines, Drum machines, Sequencers – Just multi-tracking my Juno-60…
[media id=42 width=500 height=375]

3. Dance of the Turbulent Mind – a sound collage-like piece of music. I’m not sure where the melody came from… I’m sure I’ve heard it somewhere before. This piece had 3 tracks of the Juno-60 and one track of sound effects…
[media id=43 width=500 height=375]

5. Corruption – Recorded with Mark Powell and his friends Andrew and Pat on November 8th and 9th, 1986. Andrew programmed the drum rhythm and played bass, and Pat added some guitar…
[media id=45 width=500 height=375]

6. Into The Deepend – Recorded with Mark Powell and his friends Andrew and Pat on November 8th and 9th, 1986. Andrew programmed the drum rhythm and played bass, and Pat added some other keyboard sounds.
[media id=46 width=500 height=375]

Misc. Notes

The Eccentric Activities “scratchy writing” logo is from a little sketch I drew (that little guy was called “Content Guy”) which Tania used to hand-cut a silkscreen in her class at school (she was in her senior year of high school when we met) and then she surprised me with some Eccentric Activities T-Shirts she had hand-printed – so cool!

The graphics for thesongs on this playlist are images from photocopied contact sheets of photos of me and my friend Betsy, taken by artist Zane Ott sometime in 1985. I used these same photocopied contact sheets for the insert of the cassette tape of Eccentric Activities I made in late 1986…

Above: Cover and side of Eccentric Activities Cassette Tape from 1986

A Seven Song Playlist…

So you can just kick back and listen to all 7 songs, one after the other…

Definition

Section 5150 is a section of the California Welfare and Institutions Code (specifically, the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act or “LPS”) which allows a qualified officer or clinician to involuntarily confine a person deemed to have a mental disorder that makes them a danger to him or her self, and/or others and/or gravely disabled. A qualified officer, which includes any California peace officer, as well as any specifically designated county clinician, can request the confinement after signing a written declaration. When used as a term, 5150 (pronounced “fifty-one-fifty”) can informally refer to the person being confined or to the declaration itself.

Credits

Original music and sound collage by Jon, onehumanbeing

Visualscape
Directed by Jon, onehumanbeing

Video Sources

All of the pieces I used for this sound collage visualscape have been re-edited, altered, color and time shifted and manipulated in a number of ways to achieve my final results… but here are the originals if you would like to delve into the “real” stories.

Tania’s dad, Mark Leysen, who is an artist, is the one standing in the foreground, and was deeply influenced by that irascible group of artists known as the New York School of Abstract Expressionism – the group of people behind him…

The Irascible Group photo is from an article in Life Magazine – January 15, 1951. This was the article that sent Jackson Pollock to the top of the art world heap.

Last year my motto for the year was Share Your Truth, and this year my motto is Share Your Story…

Where does my motto come from?

I have been following the tracks of a vision, a creative pilgrimage of sorts, for several years which I am now chronicling on one of my project sites I launched in 2009 called The Turning – A Serial.

This journey continues through 2015, with various periods of time marked-out and notated in different ways… and each year has a motto.

Why a motto?

Because it simply condenses the massive amount of ideas I’m working with into a single phrase, which helps me stay on track throughout the year. When I forget why I’m doing everything I can always come back to my motto and find the tracks of the vision.

The overall piece that The Turning is a part of is something called The Book of Days and has taken over a significant part of my life since it began in 2008.

This vision began with one tiny little spark of an idea…

One Human, Being

A Very Short Story About My Name

In late October 2007 I had a funny little thought one day, “I’m just one human, being…” which, for me, embodied the idea of just one human in the act of being and also the idea of what is possible from just one human being. What difference can one human being really make?

And then I thought, “I wonder if the domain name ‘onehumanbeing.com’ is available?” – I checked, it was available, and I ordered it immediately.

the onehumanbeing logo

In that instant, a whole new journey was launched and Jon, onehumanbeing became part my identity and my new working name.

For over twenty years I had been doing all of my work under my name Jon Christopher, which is just part of my full name, but expressed my identity and my mission – “Gift of God, Christ Bearer.”

Ever since I was very young I thought of names as more than just random labels we put on people, but as a statement of identity, and I had changed what I wanted to be called every few years – lengthening or shortening my name – to fit my image of myself or to make a statement about who I was going to be next.

Around the time I turned 21 I choose to become Jon Christopher and started off on a new path that led to Tania and the life which I now live; and then, 22 years later, a new metamorphosis had begun.

After a few months of use one human, being smoothed out and morphed intoJon, onehumanbeing, which made it easy to give people my name and my web address – onehumanbeing.com – in one easy to remember phrase (at least it seems that way to me, but mostly people just get really confused when I tell them my name is Jon, onehumanbeing.)

It was around this time that my dreadlocks got started and our two dogs, Moseley and Suki, joined our lives.

It’s taken all of 2008 and 2009 for theses changes to do their work and strip away old material and habits, and for new ideas and possibilities to solidify.

But now a certain part of the process has finished and a new year and a new decade has begun and I continue on my journey.

Other Peoples Stories

Our friends, Russ and Laura, got on their bikes and hit the road this last year…

They recently stayed at Slab City near the Salton Sea and in the spirit of sharing stories I wanted to share an excerpt from their blog – you can go to their blog to read the whole story.

…While we are having our coffee, a steady stream of characters come and go. One pear-shaped old man comes and talks with us. He tells us how he use to volunteer at free clinics, how he has been on the road the last fifteen years and has lived year round at the Slab for five years, how he lost contact with his brother and family but reconnected with them recently through Facebook.

Every sun burned, dust covered face has their own story, their own unique tragedy or tale of escape that has brought them to the Slabs. We hear snippets and loose threads that make up the strange patchwork tapestry of the place but we have to keep moving…

Do You Realize…

I love the ecstatic humanity expressed in this video, and it contains many of my hopes for 2010…

Do You Realize – that you have the most beautiful face
Do You Realize – we’re floating in space
Do You Realize – that happiness makes you cry
Do You Realize – that everyone you know someday will die

And instead of saying all of your goodbyes – let them know
You realize that life goes fast
It’s hard to make the good things last
You realize the sun don’-go down
It’s just an illusion caused by the world spinning round

Do You Realize – that you have the most beautiful face
Do You Realize…

Lyrics from “Do You Realize” by The Flaming Lips

Don’t wait for tomorrow to appreciate and support those you love today. Let them know you realize… and remember – You have the most beautiful face!

The Once In A Blue Moon New Year’s Eve Party – 2009 into 2010

We spent the last hours of 2009 with some good friends at our The Once In A Blue Moon New Year’s Eve Party.

We talked, ate and drank, counted down til Midnight, had the iTunes playing a New Year’s Eve party playlist, cheered with Champagne, ate sauerkraut for good luck and everyone went home safely with a commemorative button in the early morning hours…

Here’s a small selection of photos… A few friends that arrived just before midnight or later didn’t make it into our photos from the night (we set the camera down somewhere and forgot about it…)

We finally fell asleep around 3:30-4:00 in the morning and didn’t wake until noon.

Our dogs, Moseley and Suki, had a great time too and have spent the whole day today sleeping… just the thing to do on New Year’s Day.

Thank you to all that attended our party, we were honored that you choose to spend New Year’s Eve with us!

2009 – Hope, Change and Let Them Eat Cake

I read a bunch of good articles today that did a fine job of reflecting on the sorry state of affairs that we call the first decade of the new millennium… here’s a few of them:

A few weeks ago, Newsweek produced a video, which condensed the major news events of the past decade into one seven-minute mashup video. This interested me! So, I merrily sat down at my desk, queued it up, and prepared to watch it unfold. At the time, I thought: “Oh, this will be fun.”

It was not fun. Not at all. You know what? This past decade was pretty terrible!

…What we had in the 2000s was far, far worse than a “Big Zero.” The last ten years have been so miserable for the United States that a “Big Zero” would be an immeasurable improvement compared to what we got. If we could freeze time and move the country back to January 1999 it would be like hitting the jackpot! With all its squandered wealth, wasted lives, despoiled environment, growing inequality, and a Supreme Court stacked to favor corporate power, a “Big Zero” is a distant, unattainable goal.

Revenge fantasies are durable, reliable entertainments because they allow us to experience actions that aren’t allowed in real life, and that most of us wouldn’t truly want to experience even if given the chance. That would be fine if we were just talking about pop culture. But during the 2000s, the revenge fantasy escaped the realm of fiction. It came to dominate our politics and — for a while — overturned centuries of established U.S. policy and tradition toward prisoners.

…Which brings me to Decembuary 0. This should take the place of the traditional January 1st, and act as a sort of transitional day between the years. This way, you can feel awful and disgusting and piss away your day watching TV in the same pants you’ve been wearing for the past 36 hours without feeling like the new year is getting off to an discouraging start.

about onehumanbeing.com

This website is designed, built and maintained by Jon, onehumanbeing.

onehumanbeing.com was established in 2008 as a way to initiate a new season of art for myself.

It is a super-project that launched a number of different sub-projects that have come and, mostly, gone (into my digital portfolio) such as redbotlovesyou.com, The Philip K. Dick Reading Club, The Turning, The MMJ Project, The MMJ Lists, The All-Seeing Eyebama, and UFOverdriver.

Most of this work has been done as Jungian experiments to explore the use of consciousness and the collective conscious as both subject matter and as an art material.